By Brenda van Wyk
We welcome the latest featured chapter from our book Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices Through Online Narratives by Dr. Brenda van Wyk, research fellow and senior lecturer in the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Storytelling in the African context has a rich history. I rediscovered the joys of storytelling whilst doing research on metaliteracy. I started my career, many moons ago, as a children’s librarian, where storytelling played a huge role. Life’s winding roads came full circle for me when I continued researching literacies and literacy frameworks. This was when I was introduced to the invaluable research on metaliteracy, and its subset of digital storytelling. It did not take much to rekindle my passion, this time in digital format. In this chapter, I report on a study looking at information support services to further the development of self-determined students through a narrative platform capable of crossing many cognitive and metacognitive boundaries and hurdles. The essence of digital storytelling is captured in this quote from my chapter:
“Digital Storytelling is not merely making use of one-directional predesigned videos for online tutorials. It is deeply ethnographical, autoethnographic and participatory… The educational value and strengths of Digital Storytelling manifest in developing cognitive fluency. Cognitive abilities such as critical thinking, reflection, creative problem-solving, and reasoning in an academic learning environment allow for new knowledge creation through immersive experiences for the recipient. Designed correctly, it has the potential to motivate, create interest and increase user engagement for deeper learning. It is a tool that potentially could address the literacy challenges of the South African undergraduate student” (2024, p.56).
Although there is still much work ahead to revive the various affordances of storytelling in South African cases, the study shares the potential value digital storytelling could have in academic information support. In my own teaching experience, I found that students engage easily and remember better when case studies and real-life examples of their theoretical content are shared as digital stories. And this is even more amplified when they are collaboratively creating digital stories.
Brenda van Wyk is currently a research fellow and senior lecturer in the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She holds two master’s degrees, one in education (educational technology) and one in information science and knowledge management. She has a PhD in information science. She has industry experience in managing information services and systems in both public and academic libraries and information services. She is the editor in chief for an academic journal: The Independent Journal of Teaching and Learning.
van Wyk, Brenda (2024). Digital Storytelling and Cognitive Justice in Academic Information Services in South Africa – A Story Waiting to be Discovered. In Aird and Mackey (Eds.), Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives. (pp. 37-63). Rowman & Littlefield.
Global Digital Stories 